SAAL Nexus is an event series at Kanuti Gildi SAAL, where each event centers around questions and topics that pop up in the cultural field. On October 20, we will focus on research and curiosity as a practice. Three artists, Urmas Lüüs, Elle Viies, and Maike Lond, will open up the archaeology of their creative processes by exploring the topics they have delved into throughout their various creative projects.
We often see the part of an artist’s work that makes its way into a finished piece, while the discoveries and research methods that shape the practice remain in the rehearsal room or in notebooks. This time, SAAL Nexus will take the form of a hangout – a space to get to know one another’s thoughts, delve into things together and get into discussions, ask questions, and look at slides. We will look at killed darlings as well as various loose threads, the connections that lead from one thing to another.
Elle Viies graduated from the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy with a degree in Dance Art. Viies has created short solo works, performed in various productions, and directed three works: “Pastoral” (2024), “Enigma “(2025, winner of the 2026 Estonian Theatre Awards Dance Prize and part of the main programme of the 2026 Draama Festival), and “Varia” (2026). She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Literary Studies at the University of Tartu. She is interested in dense text and symbolic choreography.
Maike Lond has a diploma from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. She is an artist working in the frame of white cube as well as black box. Maike is one of the initiators of an artist collective MIMproject and performing arts venue elektron.art. Her installations and performances (“Postuganda”, “10 journeys to a place where nothing happens*”, “99 Words for Void”, “Nobody’s Radio”, “Three Ballads, a Story and My Mother’s Estate”) have been displayed and shown in theaters, media centers and festivals around Europe. She is a light designer and dramaturge. She works in kitchens and bars and plays guitar in a noise rock band. Maike is living and working in Tallinn, Estonia.
Urmas Lüüs holds BA and MA degrees from the Estonian Academy of Arts, specializing in blacksmithing. He became interested in installation art and found friends in the field of technological theatre, then finding himself increasingly on stage as well. According to critics, his work primarily deals with theatrical installations and installation-based theatre, while in his own view, he is constantly doing the same thing over and over again.
The Latin word nexus refers to a series of connections or a focal point, so each SAAL Nexus event focuses on a different entanglement of questions or a knot in the arts field. Everyone is welcome to SAAL Nexus – to listen, participate, co-think or just hang out! This grid has an endless number of connection points to map out at further events.
Next up on SAAL Nexus:
On work and play on 13 November
Previous SAAL Nexus events:
– On leadership:
– On dealing with fear:
– Career day for young people:
– On independent publishing: